Previews

LittleBigPlanet

Media Molecule let us test drive the customizable elements of the game until we got dragged off.

Spiffy:

Designing a level is as simple (or complex) as it is exceptionally fun.

Iffy:

The release date seems to keep falling farther back; we can't wait.

LittleBigPlanet was undoubtedly one of the biggest titles at Game Developers Conference this past March. With its emphasis on user-created content, Media Molecule's title received a rousing round of applause during Phil Harrison's presentation at the conference. The buzz around it has become huge. We got a chance to try out the basic platforming mechanics at Sony Gamer's Day in mid-May, but we didn't have the chance to actually try to create stuff. We finally did earlier today, and damned if we didn't create our brains out with Executive Producer Siobhan Reddy, or at least, until we got kicked off the machine. Take that as a very good sign.

It'd be easy to write some lengthy overview of what LBP entails, all of the adorable sock characters, and all of the different stickers you can get, but honestly, what we saw and could do today is significantly more interesting. We finally got a first shot at creating levels, and it looks like you'll be able to have just as much fun screwing around with the level creator as you will playing through the pre-made levels. The central idea, we discovered, was to leave the tools for both hardcore and casual gamers to make their own designs. For those with less time and anal tendencies, there are templates that you can build around, such as backgrounds, like Japanese gardens, deserts, graveyards, and of course, the forest we've all seen since the March unveiling. For the hardcore, the possibilities could be endless.

What we've also found is that you'll have plenty of options in regard to creating shapes and objects to climb. Those same barriers that you saw Sackboys and Sackgirls (as Media Molecule team members like to call them) climbing can be made with not only the same crazy cloth designs that you can use on your characters, but can also be forged from different elements. The cloth barriers seem to make good building blocks, while cardboard seems to be better-designed for all sorts of odd stuff, from vehicles to making a huge cardboard man to climb. It seems that the team has gone a long way to create universal symbology -- we'd presume that it's to make localization easier for different languages and for younger audiences to play -- but it's very effective for seeing stuff like glue, and rotating wheels, which you can attach to cardboard shapes to create stuff such as tanks, the grand finale to our demo. You'll also have tools to forge towering metal objects to climb, plus the ability to punch holes in your objects with a delete tool, which also sharpens or smooths different items.

We also picked the brains of some of the development team during our demo about online features and the robust amount of sharing involved over PlayStation Network. You can send created items, such as the aforementioned tanks, to friends, who can take an item, improve it, and bounce it back to you. You'll even be able to make a very cool item and embed it in your level as an unlockable Easter Egg. For example, we saw a huge mechanical (we think) dragon called the Stompinator, which featured a series of gears and rotating wheels that allowed it to "walk" across the stage. Media Molecule also showed off the Binary Adder, which was a giant wooden adding machine that was inspired by a video the team saw on YouTube. Interestingly, one member confessed that he can't wait for the game to be out, because, "we want to be one-upped by our users."